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Forum talk:Transparent Government
What is this? Early on, in Campaign's infancy (if we're out of it yet), I made the suggestion that articles on issues should resemble "Dynamic Essays," huge, well-organized and well-written essays that offered a very good foundation for any investigating an issue. That didn't take off so well--people seem to prefer nice bulleted one-off facts about the issues. I figure that format is better for someone who just wants a quick run-down, or doing a fishing expedition for random facts that support their position. So I'm going to try to create a seperate space for these Dynamic Essays. This is the first one, just the beginnings of a passionate plea the liberty-loving hearts out there. I envision this and other Dynamic Essays growing and growing, becoming well-tuned and serving as a jumping off point for further insight into the issue. Initially I'm thinking that only people who agree with the general thesis of an essay should contribute. The point/counter-point system evidenced thus far on Campaigns really breaks up the reading and I see it as ultimately unbeneficial to anyone. That's just my opinion. I would prefer any dissenters to create their own essay that does not directly counter one essay, but puts forth their views on the topic. That's what we want, I think: nuanced views that are profoundly different from the current Republican/Democrat I'm right/You're wrong mentality. If anyone does happen to create a dynamic essay that is related to this one, or any other essays that might be popping, feel free to include a link at the bottom of the page to those essays, and include a synopsis and maybe a great quote to lure readers in. Also, I want to see people discussing the dynamic essay on the discussion page, debating the points brought up in the essay. This should be separate from discussions amongst the writers of the essay, so I'm going to create different sections--'general discussion' to post question, comments, and concerns about the ideas in the essay, and 'editing discussion' to discuss how to better the essay.' I would ask that all concerns be brought up on the discussion page before making changes to the essay. Ferguson 20:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC) General Thoughts Does the idea of "the transparent society" really need to be part of the issue of government transparency? The privacy issues it raises are irrelevant to what I would think is the main issue, namely that "democracy" is meaningless if "the sovereign people" aren't allowed to know what their government is doing. Deadplanet 21:13, 20 August 2006 (UTC) :I think it does. I see "surveilance in general" as basically an economic and technological inevitability. The "transparent society issue" is that as the scrutiny of public places and average private citizens increases, it's essential for the "free and open society" stuff that the people involved in governance (especially those whose powers are magnified by technology) are subject to a similar increases in scrutiny. 15 years from now, it's entirely possible that the FBI/CIA/Homeland Security Agency (or whatever exists then in this role) will be able to fill in 80% of the "out in public" lives of average citizens using widespread video feeds and video analysis software that's in development. Where you go to shop, who you meet, and so on. :* I think that it's important that there be a webpage giving that kind of scrutiny to the director of homeland security and the federal reserve chair. :* Who does supreme court justice Antonin Scalia go hunting with? I should be able to get that info at ScaliaWatch.Com (or whatever replaces the websites by then if things keep changing fast). :* I think there should be public cameras in the police station. :* If the CIA has archives of my phone calls back to at least 2003 in case they ever *want* to look into me (and I suspect they have such archives because I've made international calls) then I should be able to go to CIAWatch.Com to see who is on the list of people with potential access to those archives and see if they are people I'm happy having such access. :* Bush wants to be able to keep the list of people he invites to the whitehouse to give him advice secret... I say NO! to that because he seems to have no problem mining the network of "who calls who" to identify cliques the government thinks might be in a conspiracy. Hello!? People suspect Bush of being part of an oil industry conspiracy. I think such people are kinda nuts... but until the light of public knowledge shines on that mess I can't simply offer them evidence that there's no conspiracy. It's the same issue except with "who is allowed to keep secrets by virtue of their position of power" reversed. :The transparent society is explicitly political in it's demand that if scrutiny of normal people increases (which seems inevitable) then it should be part of "equal scrutiny of everyone, even and especially the powerful". It's an argument that whatever level of surveilance is "good for private citizens" is also "good for the public citizens involved in governance". If one wratchets slowly up, so should the other. : - JenniferForUnity 21:10, 22 August 2006 (UTC) ::While I agree with many of your points and think they are definitely worth mentioning, I'm not sure that they're suitable for this essay. It sounds like you've got enough information to start a separate one (which would go in the "See also" section of this one), and I think that would be beneficial both to this article's thesis and to your own. --whosawhatsis? 23:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC) I think this article needs a title that better represents its thesis and separates it from the APOV article, Forum:Open Government. I suggest something along the lines of "The Importance of Government Transparency". Thoughts? --whosawhatsis? 00:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC) :I would not be opposed to such a change. Ferguson 05:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC) Why Trust the Government? thoughts and comments about the section 'Why Trust Government?' '' National Security ''thoughts and comments about the section 'National Security' '' The Transparent Society ''thoughts and comments about the section 'The Transparent Society' '' Editing Discussion Can we chew the fat on the opening line? It's been altered from my original, and I think it doesn't quite pop...here's what it is now: :''While terrorists can bomb buildings and rival nations may wage war, the very definition of a government includes that it is an organization which, within its territory, has an effective monopoly on the use of violence that is used to compell people in the territory to follow the laws the governing organization promulgates. Thus, in some sense, the most dangerous threat to most of the people in any nation is those people's own government. I believe the editor was trying to lessen the provocation of the flat statement 'the most dangerous threat to the people of a nation is their own government.' Valid objection, but it kind of waters down that opener. Thoughts? Ferguson 05:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC) :I would be in favor of changing the last sentence to "Thus, the most dangerous potential threat to the people in any nation is their own government." --whosawhatsis? 05:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC) ::That's a start, but my real issue the awkwardness and length of the first sentence. I tried to come up with a snappier sentence that captured the essence of how it is now, because I like it, but I couldn't. While it's good to explain why the government is more dangerous than terrorists or invading armies, it might be best to leave that up to the essay that follows. Shall we go back to the original stinger, or keep working on punching up how it is now? Ferguson 17:55, 19 September 2006 (UTC) :::Changed opener :::I just with the original sentence, but I think it's important to point out why the government is threatening, and I think the sentiments expressed in the other opener were spot-on. I'd like to see that developed into its own section. I may do that in the future if no one else does. -- Ferguson 23:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC) ::::For now, I've integrated most of the text removed from that paragraph into the next. It'd be great to see it become its own section, but it was good and I don't want to lose it in the meantime. --whosawhatsis? 01:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC) :::::Works for now :::::I agree, it's good stuff that needs to be said. -- Ferguson 08:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC) Why Trust the Government? editorial concerns about the section 'Why Trust the Government?' '' I'm still new to this wiki stuff, but I can see that what I'm trying to do isn't really The Wiki Way. Filling the talk page with drafts of sections of the main article will get out of control quickly. However, by analogy with open-source software development, I think we'll get more coherent pages if we defer voluntarily to a team leader for each page. (Benevolent dictatorship works just fine when the ruled are free to abandon the ruler!) I'd rather put my stuff in some temporary area and let Ferguson decide what to use where. Is the Whosawhatsis sandbox tree the sort of thing that only admins can set up? What's the best way to keep this kind of temporary stuff out of the way? Deadplanet 16:54, 30 September 2006 (UTC) :You can create sandboxes just like any other page. I just put more effort into keeping mine organized than most. So make a new page in your userspace, just create a new page starting with "User:Deadplanet/". For example, User:Deadplanet/Sandbox. --whosawhatsis? 18:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC) National Security? ''editorial concerns about the section 'National Security' '' The Transparent Society ''editorial concerns about the section 'The Transparent Society' '' Government is private interest pursued by other means. ''A candidate section for inclusion in the Transparency page Participating in government is like other human activities, and people in government are like other people: they work to promote their own interests and to reach their own goals. This doesn't mean that "public service" is impossible, but it means that public servants must be given well-defined and well-chosen tasks, and that their success in their jobs must be judged by how well they accomplish those tasks. It doesn't mean that altruism doesn't exist, but it means that people will disagree as often and as violently about altruistic activities as about more obviously self-serving issues. With no one watching, self-interest inevitably trumps public policy, leading to corruption and/or the ideological abuse of power. Can a government watch itself, with Internal Affairs teams and Inspectors General representing the public inside opaque organizations? Not very well. Organizations, being hierarchies of self-interested people who get benefits from their places in those hierarchies, will naturally protect themselves against outsiders. They can be effective in punishing employees who steal from them, while being equally effective in capturing and wasting an oversized share of public funds. The "whistleblowers" who expose conspiracies against the public are treated as enemies of their organizations. "Loyal" employees put the interests of their organizations above the more distant and abstract claims of the public interest. Trusting government is therefore an absurdity. Any system claimed to be democratic must let the people see how decisions are reached, and must provide mechanisms for blocking and reversing bad decisions. The great strength of the original American system was neither freedom nor democracy, but the system of checks and balances. This system has to a great extent been defeated by non-transparent "innovations" added since the creation of the system: corporations, the two-party system, the National Security State, and the mass media. Deadplanet 03:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC) :Sounds good to me. --whosawhatsis? 04:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC) ::I like it a lot, but I'm not sure it warrents its own section. I think a lot of the ideas can be incorporated into the 'Why Trust the Government?' section. I especially like the part about the absurdity of government policing itself. You also make a great point about emphasizing that freedom and democracy don't magically appear, but must be arrived at by tangible processes. A+ -- Ferguson 19:26, 29 September 2006 (UTC) Here's my attempt at a rewrite of "Why Trust The Government?" with the new stuff in place: Why Trust The Government? As individuals, we can't possibly monitor the conduct of all the people whose actions may affect us. In most cases, we have to trust people to do what they say they'll do, whether that means trusting a teenage babysitter to behave responsibly, trusting a charity to use our donations as advertised, or trusting our government not to send our soldiers off to war under false pretenses. But we don't normally trust blindly. We use our experience to gauge how trustworthy each person or institution is. When the trust we have given is betrayed, the level of trust we'll give in the future is diminished, just as it is when the people we've trusted make it difficult for us to know whether or not they've made good on their promises. Under certain circumstances, there may turn out to have been valid reasons for a betrayal of trust, but without a reasonable and prompt explanation, trust won't - and shouldn't - survive. Citizens should never assume that their government has only their well-being in mind. From the politician's or bureaucrat's viewpoint, government is private interest pursued by other means. Participating in government is like other human activities, and people in government are like other people: they work to promote their own interests and to reach their own goals. This doesn't mean that "public service" is impossible, but it means that public servants must be given well-defined and well-chosen tasks, and that their success in their jobs must be judged by how well they accomplish those tasks. It doesn't mean that altruism doesn't exist, but it means that people will disagree as often and as violently about altruistic activities as about more obviously self-serving issues. With no one watching, self-interest inevitably trumps public policy, leading to corruption and/or the ideological abuse of power. Demands for government transparency are fundamentally demands for the ability of common citizens to verify that the government is trustworthy. Can a government watch itself, with Internal Affairs teams and Inspectors General representing the public inside opaque organizations? Not very well. Organizations, being hierarchies of self-interested people who get benefits from their places in those hierarchies, will naturally protect themselves against outsiders. They can be effective in punishing employees who steal from them, while being equally effective in capturing and wasting an oversized share of public funds. The "whistleblowers" who expose conspiracies against the public are treated as enemies of their organizations. "Loyal" employees put the interests of their organizations above the more distant and abstract claims of the public interest. Blind trust in government is therefore an absurdity. Any system claimed to be democratic must let the people see how decisions are reached, and must provide mechanisms for blocking and reversing bad decisions. The great strength of the original American system was neither freedom nor democracy, but the system of checks and balances. This system has to a great extent been defeated by non-transparent "innovations" added since the creation of the system: corporations, the two-party system, the National Security State, and the mass media. Deadplanet 04:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)